If you’re looking for a way to get rich from home and you want to run or already run your own Internet business, one of the best tools you can make use of is social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a method of social networking to increase your flow of targeted traffic to your website(s). It has been made possible by the Internet.

Social networking is nothing new. It is a method of finding more qualified prospects for your business. In the business world before and outside of the Internet, networking involves joining groups such as a local racquetball club or anything that revolves around something that interests you, and then making friends and making yourself and your services known within those groups over time. By interacting in a friendly way with people with mutually shared interests, you build trust and a reputation for expertise in your professional area. As people within the groups become convinced that they might need or want your services, they come to you willingly for help; these same people are also far more likely to give you referrals, which along with repeat sales are the lifeblood of all business owners.

With social bookmarking, you blog or you or write articles and get these articles published at online content sites; then you bookmark your blog entries, articles you write for your website(s), and articles you publish at content sites at bookmarking websites. There is quite an abundance of these and their number continues to grow as their value becomes better known and they come more and more into demand.

The bookmarking websites are places where you share content that you find useful, well-written, or informative. These sites facilitate linking back to the original content and most of them also facilitate commentary. These sites are designed to give people all over the Net access to quality information in a targeted, organized way; consequently they virtually all have categories under which you index your content. You can bookmark any content that you like, but in this case it goes without saying that the content you are bookmarking is your own.

The idea is to create social “buzz” about yourself through your content at these networking bookmark sites and get people to access the links to your content, blogs, and website(s). By indexing your content using placement under appropriate site categories and adding keyword tags, you begin to draw the attention of people who might be interested in your offerings. You can greatly enhance your visibility by taking part in the socializing aspects of these bookmarking sites, by which you make online friends and add and get subscribers to your bookmarks and content. These people don’t buy a subscription, but they do become automatic regular followers of your posts, getting them “hooked” on you and greatly upping the chances that they will eventually become a customer.

Targeted traffic is vastly more valuable than traffic you get from the “shotgun approach”. It is a great waste of time to offer your services to just anybody when you could instead find people who already probably have some degree of interest in what you offer. In business, time is money, and when you waste time you lose money. But by constantly writing on a topic such as “how to get rich working from home” and socially bookmarking and networking with your content online, you become known, trusted, and seen as relevant to a certain group of people.

One of the most effective social bookmarking and networking websites is StumbleUpon. This is both a networking site and a web browser plug-in where you download the StumbleUpon toolbar to your desktop and it becomes part of your web browser. You find different websites when you click the “Stumble!” button on the toolbar. The website chooses which new page to show based on your ratings of previous pages, ratings by your online site friends, and by the ratings of other Internet users who have similar interests using a “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” display system. It also has one-click blogging built into it. The ramifications for your business should be obvious.

Another great site is Yahoo! Answers. Here you create a profile and then answer people’s questions on specific topics. (You can also ask them.) Eventually you can become a Trusted Reporter for frequently sharing valuable answers, which greatly increases your profile at the site. You can post links to your website(s) in your answers and your profile, and post parts from your articles as answers. Yahoo! Answers is more frequently used all the time because people feel they are getting “friendly” and “earthy” advice from people with real experiences, making it a perfect fit for a social networker.

For targeting youthful prospects (teens and adults under 25), the fast-rising BEBO is perfect. BEBO is modeled on and similar to Facebook and early in 2008 was named the top performing Website of its kind in a report published in ‘Computing Which?’. The editor commented, “No matter what age you are or what interests you have, there is a social networking site out there for you.”

Yes, in fact, there is–and you as an Internet marketer want to take advantage of all the opportunities made possible with social bookmarking and networking.



By: Chang Wee Teo

About the Author:

Social bookmarks are a way for internet users to store, organize, search, share and manage web pages on the internet that they find of interest.  They replace the traditional method of browser-based system of folders by encouraging users to organize their bookmarks with tags.  Social bookmarking means storing your bookmarks online, tagging them and sharing them online with other users.                                            

Users from all over the world bookmark sites or specific pages using their favorite social bookmarks.  They can search through their bookmarks by keywords or by tags, and can access their bookmarks from any internet connection.  Almost all social bookmark sites have the same basic features like browser bookmarklets for one-click link saving, RSS feeds, tags and sharing capabilities.

In a bookmarking system, users save links to web pages they want to remember or share by the use of RSS feeds.  These bookmarks can then be organized into a list of tags that describe what the site is about.  People are always searching for information, and search is probably the most important application on the web for surfers to find what they are looking for.  Search engines give more relevancy to sites that have been recently modified or have added new content. 

This is where social bookmarks are one step ahead, notifying users when a site has been updated through the use of the RSS feeds.  Instead of going into a search engine, typing something in, you can quickly narrow down the items to what you are looking for by searching the tags.  You can even search through what other people have bookmarked as long as they remain public.  So, what started out as a way to send bookmarks to friends has really grown into social search engines. 

Social bookmark sites allow others to see your bookmarks and comment about them, creating interactivity among bookmark users.  Social bookmarking is all about the collective voice and the power of the people.  As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.  A social bookmarking system can rank a resource, or website, based on how many times it has been bookmarked by users, whereas conventional search engines rank resources based on the number of external links pointing to it.

Social technologies are here to stay, and are already growing in popularity.  Social bookmarks continue to be one of the driving forces of this evolving web.  It is all about labeling the web, making it easier to find the content that you’re looking for by passing on what you’ve found.  For users, social bookmark sites can be useful as a way to access a consolidated set of bookmarks from various computers, organize large numbers of bookmarks, and share bookmarks with contacts.  Social bookmarking can allow you to share the sites that you own to others with relevant tastes, driving traffic to your site, and creating valuable backlinks.



By: Alan Mater

About the Author:

leelefever asked:

We made this video because we want people to see the power of social bookmarking and how it makes web pages easy to remember, organize and share.